Net Neutrality gets some much needed love in the September 2014 issue of Game Informer. Game Informer is the number one gaming magazine in the United States, so it's good to see it taking a closer look at how fast lanes, data caps, and general discrimination of traffic by ISPs can affect everyday consumers.

Oddworld Inhabitants founder Lorne Lanning says that the biggest problem facing the video games industry is Net Neutrality. Speaking to GII, Lanning said that all of the progress made in the industry over the last few years could be undone by its own apathy towards preserving a free and open internet.

Earlier this year the highest appeals court in the land ruled in favor of Verizon and against the FCC (Verizon v. FCC), ultimately concluding that the agency did not have the jurisdiction to enforce its Open Internet Order under the Telecommunications Act.

This week's Weekly Wrap Up from TheECADigital channel on YouTube tackles the newest version of the PS Vita quietly released by Sony, formal rules for console games released in China, and other wacky and wild stuff happening this week.

While it's been operating in stealth mode since the beginning of 2013, the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has officially launched TheECADigital channel on YouTube. The channel offers new content every Wednesday including the latest gaming news, Let's Play videos, event coverage, and more.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has issued an action alert urging members and the internet-community-at-large to contact their elected officials in Washington D.C. and urge them to support two stop-gap measures that would restore net neutrality rules until a more permanent solution can be worked out by lawmakers. You can check out the appeal from the ECA below:

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has issued an action alert concerning the future of net neutrality, asking its members and the Internet community at large to contact their representatives in Congress, President Barack Obama, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and ask them to preserve and revise the Open Internet Order so that it can survive future legal challenges.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has put out a special call for action specific to residents of Massachusetts, where a state senator has proposed that violent video games and video games in general should be studied by a panel (put together by the Senate) to determine if they cause real-world violence.

The bill is called S 168 and is the brainchild (we use the term loosely in this case) of State Senator William Brownsberger (D).

Over the weekend a core group from Team ECA based out of our headquarters in Wilton, Connecticut, spent 23 hours setting up and playing video games to support the Extra Life charity. They managed to contribute a substantial amount of the $3,200 in total donations (so far, donations are still coming in) for the Connecticut Children’s Hospital and the Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital in Westchester, NY - both Children's Miracle Network Hospitals.

Sony has joined in on helping to promote the Extra Life charity by offering some much needed real estate to promote it on PlayStation Network. In a blog post this morning, the folks at Extra Life announced that Sony is helping to promote the charity to the 78 million PlayStation 3 owners around the world and to help them find a local Children's Miracle Network Hospital to support.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) and members of GamePolitics will be taking part in this year's Extra Life event on November 2. Since 2008, tens of thousands of gamers have joined together to raise money for local kids' hospitals in a celebration of gaming culture and gamers doing good works through charity.

On October 26 organizers of StopWatchingUs will hold a rally in Washington D.C. on the anniversary of the Patriot Act. StopWatchingUs is a nonpartisan coalition of organizations, individuals, and companies that oppose the unconstitutional mass surveillance being conducted by the National Security Agency. The collective seeks "a full Congressional investigation of America’s surveillance programs, reform to federal surveillance law, and accountability from public officials responsible for hiding this surveillance from lawmakers and the public."

Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) President Hal Halpin offers his insights on video game ownership - a topic that has caused cheers for Sony and jeers for Microsoft at E3 in Los Angeles this week.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and 85 other civil liberties groups and Internet organizations to U.S. lawmakers that it must put a stop to the National Security Agency and other U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies spying on American citizens. The letter is in response to two stories that leaked information about several NSA information gathering programs that target the internet and mobile phone activities of Americans.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) and AllPlayers.com have inked a deal to bring AllPlayers' group and member engagement software system to ECA members. The company will work with the ECA to implement the technology into its various websites. A press release detailing the deal can be found below. You can learn more about what AllPlayers does by visiting www.allplayers.com.

The Entertainment Consumer Association (ECA) and the AbleGamers Foundation have teamed up to open a special chapter of the organization dedicated to consumers called the AbleGamers Game Accessibility Chapter. The AbleGamers Foundation runs AbleGamers.com, which provides news and reviews on the accessibility of mainstream video game titles, and covers assistive technology. The ECA is the non-profit membership-driven organization that represents consumers of various forms of entertainment in the US and Canada.

Just a friendly reminder: this week the House of Representatives will hold a mark-up meeting for the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) behind closed doors and hidden from the public.

On March 20 a coalition of advocacy groups, concerned citizens, academics, and web sites sent a letter to the White House urging the President of the United States to veto CISPA in its current state if it is passed by the House and Senate.

If you weren't able to attend the Curry College event a few weeks ago (it took place a day before PAX East in Cambridge Mass.) called "Video Gaming Panel Discusses Violence, Sexism and the Future of Gaming" then you can check out the video to your left or by visiting this link.

If you are at PAX East in Boston today or for the whole weekend then you will want to stop by the Entertainment's Consumer Association's (ECA) 30 x 30 booth (#256) for some fun activities and cool giveaways. Professional gamer Dave "Walshy" Walsh will be there taking on challengers in Halo 4 1-on-1 competitions (three times daily) and a jousting competition for fun and prizes (protective gear and jousting equipment to be provided at the booth).

Last week you told you about a one-sided hearing being put on by Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Virginia) today to discuss the recent report created by National Science Foundation's director Subra Suresh and Dr. Brad J. Bushman about violent video games and real world violence like the horrific tragedy that occurred in Newtown late last year.

The Entertainment Consumer Association (ECA) has issued an alert urging members of the community to let the U.S. Senate know that you think Senator Rockefeller's bill to study violent video games is a misguided mistake. Why?

Because the Senator has publicly stated that this bill and the result of it are simply a step towards government regulation of video games. The bill, S. 134, calls for the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a study on the connection between the "exposure to violent video games and video programming and harmful effects on children."

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) went to Washington D.C last week to talk to members of Congress and their staff about the connection between video games and violence, and their conclusion was that Congress does not have the best interests of the millions of gamers in America in mind. The ECA says that when they tried to talk to lawmakers about the connection between video games and real-world violence they came away from those meetings feeling like lawmakers were not interested in the facts and instead were relying on their own biases and preferences about the video games.

Today members of the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) are heading to Washington, D.C. to talk to lawmakers about a recent spate of bills that call for new research, add government mandated labels to video games, and add fines for selling mature games. If you feel a sense of déjà vu, it is because these kinds of bills have been proposed before and they have always managed to fail to be passed or enforced because they are unconstitutional or trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) issued an action alert asking the Internet community and ECA members to let Rep. Jim Metheson's colleagues in the House of Representatives know that his proposed bill, the "Video Games Ratings Enforcement Act" (H.R. 287), is a big mistake for a number of reasons.

Over the weekend MIT newspaper The Tech reported that Internet activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide in his New York City apartment. Aaron was 26 years old. He helped build internet institutions like Reddit and Creative Commons, co-authored the very first RSS specification and was an internet activist through his work as the founder of Demand Progress. Aaron's suicide was related to his concerns about federal charges he faced for stealing 4.8 million documents from the online digital library JSTOR.

In addition to asking the gaming community to voice its collective opinion on discussions on video games taking place in Washington this week, the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has written a letter to Vice-President Joe Biden, who is heading up a task force to look at ways to deal with gun violence in the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut shooting that happened in mid-December.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has issued a call to action this morning calling on the gaming community and its members to email their representatives in Congress and the President of the United States to let them know that blaming video games for the recent tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut is wrong-headed, and that there is no research to suggest that there is a correlation between gun violence in America and playing video games.

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ZippyDSMlee: .....win8 hates any left over hidden install partitions from other version of windows....only waste 5 hours finding that out...its ahrder than you think keeping up with 4 or 5 HDDS......03/03/2015 - 4:44am

Matthew Wilson: I am going to pax east, any games you guys want me to check out?03/02/2015 - 11:23pm

ZippyDSMlee: No one remembers the days of Cinemagic and Cynergy eh? :P, meh even MGS is getting to film like....03/02/2015 - 8:44pm

MechaTama31: I was about to get all defensive about liking Metal Gear Solid, but then I saw that he was talking about "cinematic" as a euphemism for "crappy framerate".03/02/2015 - 8:29pm

prh99: Just replace cinematic with the appropriate synonym for poo and you'll have gist of any press release.03/02/2015 - 5:34pm

Monte: Though from a business side, i would agree with the article. While it would be smarter for developers to slow down, you can't expect EA, Activision or ubisoft to do something like that. Nintnedo's gotta get the third party back.02/28/2015 - 4:36pm

Monte: Though it does also help that nintendo's more colorful style is a lot less reliant on graphics than more realistic games. Wind Waker is over 10 years old and still looks good for its age.02/28/2015 - 4:33pm

Monte: With the Wii, nintnedo had the right idea. Hold back on shiny graphics and focus on the gameplay experience. Unfortunatly everyone else keeps pushing for newer graphics and it matters less and less each generation. I can barely notice the difference02/28/2015 - 4:29pm

Monte: ON third party developers; i kinda think they should slow down to nintendo's pace. They bemoan the rising costs of AAA gaming, but then constantly push for the best graphics which is makes up a lot of those costs. Be easier to afford if they held back02/28/2015 - 4:27pm

Matthew Wilson: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/02/28/the-world-is-nintendos-if-only-theyd-take-it/ I think this is a interesting op-ed, but yeah it kind of is stating the obvious.02/28/2015 - 2:52pm